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This Week in Google 280 (Transcript)

Leo: It's time for TWiG, This
Week in Google. Jeff and Gina are here with the last show of the year and even
as we speak, big stories breaking out of Sony Pictures
Entertainment and the hack. We've got all that news plus we'll talk about
whether the media has a right to rehash the information the hackers stole. It's
all coming up next on TWiG

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Week in Google is provided by Cachefly.com.

This is TWiG, This Week in
Google, episode 280, recorded December 17th, 2014.

Sony Pictureless

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It's time for TWiG, This Week
in Google, the shoe where we cover Google, the Cloud,
the Google-verse, the Twitter-verse, the Facebook-verse. What is your verse?
This is our last show of 2014. Gina Trapani is here from ThinkUp.com. She's
also developer and host of All About Android every
Tuesday night on this network.

Gina: Hi. 2014!

Leo: Hi. From her basement Brooklyn abode.

Gina: Yes, good to be here. I can't believe it's our last
show of 2014, that's crazy. I'm going to be around on New Year's Eve, so it's
not my last time on TWiT of 2014.

Leo: That's right and we should mention that. Next week,
we'll have a Best Of show and then some of you will appear on our New Year's
Eve show which is two weeks from now. Right about this time, like, my eyes will
be going, just falling asleep. Jeff Jarvis is also here, Professor of
Journalism at the City University of New York, buzzmachine.com is his blog.
Also, writes a lot on Medium. Hello, boys and girls.

Jeff: Hello. Even without a New Year's show, I'm tired
today. I'm of that age, it's time for a nap.

Leo: So the story that you could not reveal to us, of
course, last week, because you embargoed. It broke immediately after the show.

Jeff: It was driving me nuts because I knew the story during
the show. As I said to you, I had an embargo, which you advised not doing but I
did for other purposes. I went to them and I saw that it had broken in a
Spanish site, so as we're on the show, I'm emailing Google saying, “Release me!
Let me go!” I respected the embargo, had to wait till morning. I said, “Well,
it's going over the web. It's going all over, people are asking about it on
Twitter. Come on.” No, no, no. Then about an hour after the show they said,
“Oh, we're going to release it soon.” Eh.

Leo:Grr.

Gina: Timing.

Jeff: Yes, so the big story -

Leo: The big story was -

Jeff: Was that Google News was shutting down in Spain
because of the Spanish link tax, which may not be huge news, as I said last
week, to all of you. But to me, it was huge news.

Leo: Spain did what Germany did, only they even went a
little bit farther.

Jeff: A lot farther.

Leo: Because they required - the Spanish law required a
newspaper to bill Google if it knew Google even featured a headline from the
Spanish newspaper. Forget snippets, even a headline, any text at all from the
Spanish publication, then the Spanish publication was required by that law to
ask for royalties from Google. Google's response was, “We don't make any money
on Google News, you want us to pay for Google News?
That's fine, no problem. We'll just shut it down.” So they did.

Jeff: They did and finally called a European bluff.

Leo: Well done, because just as the German publishers -
Google did do this in Germany too, right?

Jeff: Well, no. Google said the difference was that in
Germany, if you don't give us permission, we will not put up snippets.

Leo: We won't link, right.

Jeff: No, they still put up headlines. No pictures, no
snippets, just a headline because that was what the law allowed. They said,
“Well, we'll put up a headline.” For DeVelt and three
minor Bilt brands, Bilt Auto and two others, they did that two weeks later.
The Germans cried uncle, or Onkel - very subtle
German joke there.

Leo:Onkel!

Jeff: Said, “We lost too much traffic and we go back up.”
Now, with that lesson having been had, the Spanish passed their law and full
disclosure here, I spoke on this the week that they passed it at a Google event
in Spain. Google paid my travel expenses, they did not
pay fees to me. I told them, I said, “This is dangerous that you're killing the
web. This is going to be bad, you're not going to want
this.” And that, of course, all of Spain didn't listen to me. They passed the
law and Google said, as of Tuesday, this law is supposed to go into effect
January 1st, but Google said, “We can't negotiate with you. Germany, we could
negotiate and say we'd put up headlines, no snippets, agree or not. Here, there
was no option for the publishers of any sides to agree.” Then the publishers
afterwards supposedly were trying to go the EU, saying, “Help and kind of make
Google negotiate.” But I talked to Google about this and, you know, Google said
to their interpretation, the Spanish publishers were trying to say, “Make them
pay,” and we're not paying. So, no, that's it. Google
News Spain right now is dead.

Leo: As of 8:30 Eastern last night, they shut it down and
already, according to Matthew Ingram, writing at GigaOm, Chartbeat is reporting double-digit declines in
outside traffic to these Spanish news sites. The blue line is today, the green
line is the same day last week. Double-digit declines already and guess what? I
love this, this must make Google feel so good. “Less
than 12 hours later, Spanish publishers have gone to the government asking for
help.”

Gina: Oh, ho, wow.

Jeff: Be careful what you wish for, amigos.

Leo: (stammering)

Gina: So this is just Google News, this isn't just straight
Google Search? Why?

Jeff: Yes, that's a really good question, Gina. Because the
law is specifically written to aggregators, to the active aggregating, and Search is a different act. So if I come across a headline in Search, that is not - even though Google News, we know, in
America basically provides those headlines. If I search for a headline and it
comes up in Search, that's not a problem. If you aggregate the headlines, this
is aimed strictly at Google News, then you're out. But
of course, this is not just Google News. Anyone else who aggregates headlines
is in the same boat. This, what's so important about this is it taxes speech.

Leo: “The Spanish Association of Daily Newspaper Publishers
said in a statement late last week, the closure of Google News ... is not
equivalent to closing of another service given its dominant position in the
market and will undoubtedly have a negative impact on Spanish citizens in
business.” They therefore said, “it requires the
intervention of the Spanish and EU authorities, and of competition authorities
to effectively protect the rights of citizens and businesses.” They want the
next step, a law forcing Google to keep Google News open.

Gina: I'm trying to understand the logic here. So the idea
is -

Jeff:Haha. Good luck, Gina.

Gina: Google's not allowed to create another front page to
our content? Is that what -

Leo: Okay, I'll be a Spanish publisher for a moment.

Gina: Please.

Leo: So we work very hard, we spend many, many, many
dollars making of the beautiful newspaper - that's Italian.

Jeff: You're a Hessitic Spanish
publisher.

Gina: That sounds Italian, but I'll take it. I like it.

Leo: Yes. This newspaper is made of fine Corinthian - no.
The newspaper, you take and make page with a headlines and a snippets. Nobody gonna read the newspaper because you have basically
piggybacked on our content and you're reusing our content without giving us any
compensation for it. It's as if Google went out and took clips from all the
podcasts, put it on one page and nobody would have to listen to the podcasts
anymore because I've got everything I need on the one page.

Gina: Okay.

Leo: I think that's not an unreasonable - you know, I can
understand why they feel that way. What it ignores is the amount of traffic
that Google actually does send to them. Now they have, you know, proof of this,
that in fact, it's in that gain for you. Because it doesn't
stop people from going to your sites. More people go to your sites.

Jeff: Indeed. If anyone should be charging anybody, it's Google should be charging for the distribution and
promotion.

Leo: In the words of Eyebookery,
“My name is Spanish newspaper. You killed my circulation, now prepare to die.”
I'm sorry. That's a very bad play on, you know, the Princess Bride. That's not
- go ahead.

Gina: How would you feel if someone - and I know the fans of TWiT have done this, but say someone took and did a
massively viral super-cut of TWiT videos that removed
all the sponsors and were just the best parts. You know, it was someone
completely unaffiliated with TWiT and it went totally
viral on YouTube and people loved it and that was the video that people were
sharing. I guess this isn't really a great analogy, because you can't drive
things from -

Leo: No, I would be thrilled about it, I'll be honest with you.

Gina: Good.

Leo: I'd be thrilled about it. Our license, in fact,
explicitly allows that we are Creative Commons. You can remix our content, the only requirements are you have to give
attribution. It would have to say, “This is a mashup of TWiT shows.” You can't do it for commercial purposes, so you could put it on YouTube
but you couldn't monetize it on YouTube. That's exactly what Google's doing, by
the way. They are not monetizing. There's no ads on
Google News. They're remixing it and the reason I would welcome it is because
it would be my hope, and I'm pretty sure it would be the case, that people
would watch and go, “I like that,” and maybe find out more about TWiT.

Jeff: Yes, indeed, Gina. When Repost On Us was alive and we worked with them and we were working in New Jersey with an
alternative copyright. But the data for Repost showed the when people read an
embedded article, the entire article or the entire blog post was embedded on
your site from Buzzmachine, let's say. That the click
through rate, which you think would be zero with the argument you just made
because you just read the entire article. You're sated; you're full. No more, I
have no hunger, thank you very much. Instead the click through rate ruled 3-5%
or 5-7%.

Leo: Interesting.

Jeff: Which says that - and those were very qualified clicks
because they're all saying, “Hey, I like you. Can I like you at home?”

Gina: Right.

Jeff: What it says is, your content
is your best ad. What we need is business models to support this kind of
distribution but that's not what - so, actually, I think that we need to do a
study on this. I've been trying to find cooperative parties for years who would do a study on this. I wrote a white paper about
this a couple years ago. What I want to do is test the kinds and lengths of
links to see what's most effective. I think that there's an argument that says
that something's that's too short isn't actually that good. Google's links now
on Google News are actually too short, because you don't know enough of what
you're going to get, “Ah, I won't bother clicking.” It's impossible for me to
say that the argument you made, I think, Gina, that they're making is, “You're
sated. You're full. You knew everything you needed to know.” Well, yes. If what
you need to know is just simply that you can buy Cuban cigars again, then
that's all you need to know. But in fact, you're going to want to know more
than that. You want to go say, “Whoa, what is the deal with this Cuban thing?
Can I get cigars? What's the whole thing? By the way, what's
the human rights?” All kinds of things. You're
going to go and look farther. If all you needed to know is, “Rain tomorrow.”
Yes, that information stops you. But for the kinds of things that are in Google
News, that's just not the case.

Jeff: Just doing brief, brief snippets. Then I think, that's one level, right? The other extreme is the whole
article, which I just talked about. The question for me is, what's the most effective in the middle? If you look at, you know, Business
Insider. They and many other sites, I don't mean to pick on Business Insider.
But Business Insider, GigaOm, lots and lots of sites
basically take out the soul of an article, rewrite it and make it shorter. Now,
that's a different argument, because what that says is, “Well, maybe your
article is too long and it's actually a service to give me a shorter version.
Maybe I don't click through from that because I've got everything I needed. Or
maybe it enticed me so much, I did want to read the
whole thing. There's no research whatsoever on that kind of data and I want to
try and work with someplace like Chartbeat and
cooperative publishers to do some AB tests and figure that out.

Leo: I have to say, the way I use Google News is exactly as
- this is basically just an ad for the longer story, as far as I'm concerned.
So I go to Sci/Tech on Google News and I see top
stories, much like TechMeme which does the same
thing. A snippet is no more than a sentence or two. That doesn't - that just
tells me what the story's about and where they're
going with it. Then at that point, I'm always going to click and I always do,
on the link and read the story and see the ads, more importantly, on the source
site.

Jeff: Gina, were you making a devil's advocate argument or
do you think Google News does go too far?

Gina: No, I'm trying to understand where they're coming from
and what they feel that Google is taking away from them. So I was asking Leo,
because, you know -

Leo: Because you like my accent.

Gina: I wondered, well, you know. I don't know, I thought it
would be sort of an analogy. I know that your attitudes about this are very - I
know that you know TWiT's content is an advertisement
for TWiT. Podcasts are a little bit different though,
because they don't quite - it isn't a blue link to click on. I just don't
understand what the - you know.

Leo: What if, though, somebody took this entire show,
edited out the ads because they find them offensive and put it on YouTube? They
could do that, by the way, our license does not prohibit that.

Jeff: But that's clearly different. You know, I think we
lost the analogy.

Leo: It's not - it's legal, I wouldn't stop them. And I
wouldn't worry about it too much either. Now, if we lost our audience, if our
audience went and started watching that instead of watching the ad-supported
versions, it might put me out of business but what else - I'm not going to
change my license because of that. So anyway, I buy into this notion that this
is good publicity, that this drives traffic, this is good. Even with snippets,
this is good for Spanish publishers. I think they're learning that lesson. I
find it very ironic that their reaction to that is, “Well, we've got to go back
to the government and get an even stronger law forcing Google to keep doing
it.”

Jeff: Because that's the whole real game here, both in Germany
and in Spain, and potentially at the EU level. We're trying to put Google, our
competitor, into a bad position so they're forced to negotiate with us. Well,
negotiate for what? There's almost this belief that Google has took what was
rightfully theirs by competing with them. By saying to advertisers, “Here's a
better deal. Here's a bigger audience. We take all the risk.” Here's all kinds of reasons why Google itself is making tons
of money is because Google knows how to do online and publishers don't. (crosstalk)

Leo: This seems peculiarly European, right? I mean, I don't think anybody in the US, no publisher - well, Rupert
Murdoch, maybe, but no other publisher in the US is saying, “I don't want to be
on Google News.” I think it's well understood, the value of being on Google
News, isn't it?

Jeff: Also, it's the demonization of Google. It's Eurotechnopanic.

Leo: So this is almost anti-American or anti-corporate?

Jeff: Yes, that's part of it, I think, anti-corporate and
anti-American. Both, I believe so, yes.

Gina: Well, I mean, here publishers put up paywalls, right?
If they don't want, you know.

Leo: Yes, but even the Wall Street Journal allows Google to
go through the paywall.

Jeff: Well, Murdoch took down links and he cried uncle.

Leo: Yes, he gave up.

Gina: Yes.

Leo: But I think most other publishers, I mean, if you
talked to C-net, the Verge, PC Magazine, all the people linked here. They're
thrilled to be linked here. This is not a negative. Just as Techmeme is even worse in this regard. You could
make the case, I mean, Techmeme runs larger than just
- I mean, they run a fairly big chunk of content. This is a business for them
and nobody's complaining.

Jeff: Right.

Gina: That's because all these publishers understand how the
web works, right? That's the difference.

Leo: Exactly. Because you could shut down Techmeme. This is an ad-supported service.

Jeff: Right there in the middle. And indeed you could learn things, I do learn things, on Techmeme.
I don't want to go through, “Gee, Apple won iPod suit.” I'm so tired of that
story, that's all I needed to know. I didn't want to read more.

Leo: You're right, I didn't click
through on that.

Jeff: I'm so tired of it. But the fallacy argument that's
made is, “Aha, you would have clicked through had it not been that summary.”
No, the truth is, I never would have clicked through. I never would have seen
that story. All it said was, “Here's an Apple story that's going to change your
life!” I wouldn't have clicked on it.

Leo: Right. Well, I mean, look. I guess that's the point is
that probably most people listening to this understand the value. I understand
how, you know, in a purely kind of theoretical basis, you could be as a content
creator peeved. This is, by the way, you know, photographers - this is a very
common argument. I've talked to many, many photographers who say, “They're
stealing my pictures. They're stealing my pictures.” And I've said, “You
really, you know, either put them on the internet and live with that or not. There's really no middle ground.” But I think it's worth
putting your pictures on the internet because I look at people like Trey
Radcliffe, who gives away all his photos and makes plenty of money as a
photographer, still selling them, selling prints, doing all the other stuff.

Jeff: His generosity has been a key, on Google+, it's been the key to his growth.

Leo: It's made him. It's made him. So I know that, and I
think the conversation is less common among photographers but for a long time,
it was a very, you know - the record industry, you can go on and on. Every
industry, first reaction to this is, “They're stealing my stuff.”

Jeff: There's a difference though, Leo. We conflate them in
my industry the way we shouldn't. A photo, a novel, a sitcom, a song are unique
performance art objects. A new story, the information inside a new story and
it's the information that's valuable, is not copy-owned. Copyright covers a
limited treatment, it doesn't cover the actual
information. A society does not want anyone to own information or even, for
that matter, own ideas. It's only treatment you can own in that sense. We
conflate that with entertainment industries and think we should be treating the
same as Sopranos if we write a new story and we shouldn't.

I've got a question for both of you. So Google is
indeed, and I've learned this trying to figure out how to help cooperative news
publishers, especially in Europe. I think they shouldn't just do it in Europe.
I think they shouldn't just do old publishers and old Europe. That's another
question. They're also looking at ways they can help news in general, which I
think is the right thing to do. I'm trying to write a post now, long post,
about what Google could do, or to put it my way, “What could Google do for
news?” What would you guys - so if Google comes and says, “All right. Forget
all this stupid fighting about this stupid stuff. We actually do care about an
informant society. We actually do care about news. We do want to help, we do have power and smarts. Let's work with the
people who are good and do that.” What would you put on that list? What could
Google do for news?

Leo: I'm kind of an outlier on this because I don't think
Google should be in the content business.

Jeff: I'm not saying they should be in the content business.
How could they help those who are?

Leo: Well, they do it with Search. And I guess you could
say Google News is a special example of Search. You know, it's kind of
topic-based Search, and you're not making the search, you're saying, “What are
the topics?” And Google is telling you. I don't think that's really - I don't
have a problem with that. I would hate to see Google say, “In the public
interest, we believe news should be...” You know, I don't want them to get in
that business. I, and I know I'm an outlier,
especially with you guys, but I don't believe Google should be in the content
business at all. I don't think they should on YouTube -

Jeff: No, I agree with that. They can't be. (crosstalk)

Leo: But they are. I mean, YouTube is clearly content
business. So I would like Google to stick with Search and be a great search
engine. I understand they feel like they need to plan for the future. Search
won't always be the dominant.

Jeff: Google's a platform, Leo, like Wordpress is a platform, like water is a platform.

Leo: I think there's an inherent conflict of interest if
you're a search engine and you product content that may be a result of that
search.

Jeff: But they're not producing that content. They're the
platform for people who do produce that content.

Leo: I see. So you're saying, they're not - but no, they
are benefiting. It's like saying NBC doesn't produce the shows on NBC. Well,
that's technically true but that's a difference without a distinction. They're
still running the ads and making the money off of those shows and paying them
to be produced. Google has an even better model, “We won't even pay you. Just
put your stuff here and we'll give you a couple of bucks if you get any ads.”

Jeff: Well, all of them versus Search, you don't get those -
the publishers in Europe would say, on Search or Google News, we don't get
anything for being listed. At least on YouTube, we have the chance to make some
money. Gina, what do you think?

Gina: You know, so I think that Google has a vested interest
in making meaning out of information in order to serve its users. So, I mean,
it's the knowledge graph and knowing the difference between knowing java the
coffee and Java the computer language, that's a dumb example, but figuring out what things are. What people mean and what
people want what they search for things, all those facts and all the
intelligence that Google gathers and figures out is based on material that's
out on the web. So, I mean, you know, including new stories, right? So it's in
Google's best interest. The better the content that's out there, the better the
product is for Google. The better the world is and they're accomplishing their
mission, making the world's information accessible to everyone. I think that
the only thing that Google can do is continue to be a platform and build the
tools that empower humans to put the best quality information out there. But in
a way, it really does have to be a partnership, right? There has to be a way to
make this a viable business where reporters go out and shake down facts, and do
interviews, and make calls, and break the stories and write meaningful content
that Google can then serve its users with, right? So, like, all that Google can
do is continue to create better tools to help humans, and fact check and help
Google create meaning. Help us all create meaning for one another.

Leo: I think Google is suffering from severe mission creep.
If that's their goal, then they're going way beyond that goal. That mission has
changed.

Jeff: No, Leo, let me make it very clear here. They're not
going and thinking about this stuff as a business. They're thinking about this
stuff as trying to make nice with at least people who are willing to be nice
with them and try to help. All right, so I'm going to argue -

Leo: So why does Google do Google News? Actually, that's a
very interesting question.

Jeff: Well, because I think it was Christian Murot?? (Can't find this one when I search, tried to change
up the spellings, can you?), who's said, “After 9/11, I can't get a good sense
of an uber-view of news and what's going on. I want a compilation.” So he just
built it. It's classic engineer's way to look at the world.He had a problem and he solved it. That simple.

Leo: That's how Google has crept into other areas, is they
really do encourage their team to try stuff.

Jeff: You make “creep” sound like it's a bad thing. (crosstalk)

Leo: Here's why it's a bad thing, because if you're a
search engine, you have a lot of power.

Leo: Well, if they want to be in the search engine
business, which they still do -

Jeff: They want to be in - no. They want to be in the making
information accessible business.

Gina: Yes.

Leo: But the problem is, and I don't know if they're doing
this or not, but I don't think we can know it since they have things like
platforms like Blogger. They have content like YouTube. They could easily
prioritize their internal content in the search results, I feel that's a conflict of interest. Now, I think you've said and others have
said, “Well, they're a company. Why can't they promote their own internal stuff
on the search results?”

Jeff: Yes, I do say that and the example that the European
publishers gave is, they made a video about, “Uh-oh, go to Google, search for
'shoes'. What do you see? You see ads on the top for Google's shoe
advertisers.” What do you see below that? You see everything else in the
possible in the world of shoes.

Leo: Yes, I don't have a problem with that. That's how they
pay for shoes, the search engine.

Jeff: But if I go to Bilt's, which
is one of the publishers that's complaining and there's a whole shoe section up
there, right? What do I get? I get nothing but Bilt.
There's no obligation on Bilt, the largest paper in
all of Europe, to link to their competitors, or link to other advertisers or
link to those who don't advertise to them. Zero, nada. Google does link to the whole world and it pays for that by indeed linking to
advertising. The only issue for me is, is it clearly
labeled? And I believe it is. In the now pulled back agreement, anti-trust
agreement, with the EU or the EC, Google was going to label things they had
interest in even more. They were going to guarantee links for outside and they
were going to guarantee people could buy ads in this position, making them more
money. There was a settlement along that line, which Google was succeeding to.

Leo: Yes, and I don't mean to imply that Google is using
their power in Search to favor their own content. Because, in fact, it's pretty
obvious they're not. If you search for, “Cuba videos,” I get a C-SPAN video. I
get a History.com video. There's YouTube, a couple of them, but then there's
Vimeo, Tripfilms, CubaVideos.com. In this whole
thing, there are only two YouTube search results.

Jeff: Just don't look for maps.

Leo: Pretty clearly, they are not doing the thing we're
afraid of. There's a Google Map, right at the top of “Cuba maps.”

Jeff: But I believe down there -

Leo: But then the World Atlas, and the University of Texas
and National Geographic. So no, I think it's pretty clear that they're making
an effort to include other people's content. I just worry. I do feel like it is
a conflict of interest, but I'm not accusing them of taking advantage of it
yet. But I do feel like it's a conflict of interest.

Gina: This idea that their building the tools - I mean,
listen. If I was a mapmaker looking at those search results right there, eh. I mean, maybe I should get into a different business.

Leo: Oh, no, we get great benefits from Google. Don't get
me wrong. That's not the argument. That's not the argument at all. The argument
is merely that, and this is the essence of monopoly, if a company uses its -
this is why there's anti-trust laws. If a company uses its
monopoly in one sector to take over other sectors, to succeed other sectors.

Jeff: But that behavior has to be demonstrated and proven.
That's just it, we haven't seen it.

Leo: The fact that they could do it isn't enough, I agree.

Jeff: It's not sufficient, absolutely not.

Leo: But on the other hand, I do see Google getting into
all these other related fields. So you wonder, “Well, what are they up to?”
Maybe they just want to - they're hedging their bets. No, it's pretty clear
they're not, though it's hard to prove they're not. Because, you know, they
say, “Well, we just put the results that are most popular there. We don't pay
particular attention to our stuff.” But they could be and it
would be hard to prove whether that was happening or not. Nobody knows
how the algorithm works.

Jeff: But again, I think you have to agree that there's some
level of them linking to their own property that's perfectly legitimate.

Leo: Right, because they're a private company.

Jeff: Like TIME magazine - put it the other way. People
Magazine promotes TIME magazine.

Leo: Right, so then it would be up to me - and this is why
monopoly is the important thing. Then it would be up to me as a user to go to
some other search engine because golly, Google's stuff, they're just promoting
their own content and I don't want that. I want an objective search result. The
problem is, because they're a monopoly, where are you going to go? Bing? So
that's the issue. That's why there's anti-trust rules.
Because once a company becomes a monopoly, then things that are completely okay
to do if you only have a small percentage of the market are much more
problematic.

Jeff: That's why you watch them carefully, and that's fine.
But you do not - having a monopoly, becoming so huge because you were good is
not illegal.

Jeff: But it also says that the media coverage and
government actions there are out of sync with the populace, who obviously like
Google.

Leo: They want Google. Okay, I'll say one more thing and
then we'll drop it. Just because people like the benefits of a dictatorship doesn't
mean it's a good thing. That's not the only measurement of whether something
should be allowed. Hey, I love our overlords at Google. They give me great
value, great benefit. But that isn't the only criterion for judging whether
they're -

Jeff: But you have to have some trigger for action against,
right? (crosstalk)

Leo: I agree and at this point, there's no evidence.

Jeff: - no legal behavior. There's none of that.

Leo: I agree, at this point there is no evidence of illegal
behavior as far as I could tell. Some of us certainly -

Jeff: The only evidence is it's a big American company.

Leo: It is really important, though, and somebody in the
chatroom says, “Yes, this isn't any old monopoly. This is free speech. This is
information. This is the potential for misuse is vast.” So I don't think Google
should -

Jeff: But the misuse of power, Leo, was the Spanish
government passing a law putting the tax on links. That was a far, far greater
misuse of power affecting speech.

Leo: I agree. We do have competition, there are other
search engines.

Jeff: Whoa, looks like … I'm just seeing from the New York
Times editor Lydia Polgreen that Sony is pulling The
Interview?

Leo: Well, theaters have all day today because the hackers
have threatened 9/11 style action against theaters that run the movie. But this
is a real mystery to me, because the GOP, the people who are doing this hacking
and it's not the grand old party. It's the Guardians of something. Guardians of Poopoo. The hackers
who did this don't look governmental. The North Korean government said, “Hey,
we didn't do this but it is a righteous action.” Yet, they're pursuing exactly
what some say were the goals of - would have been the goals of a North Korean
hack, which is to get The Interview, a movie that's unflattering and in fact,
Kim Jong-Un gets killed in this movie. So I could see why the North Koreans
would be unhappy about that.

Jeff: Yes, but that's also free speech.

Leo: They don't have free speech in North Korea, dude.

Jeff: No, but they can't come in and change ours. What
they've done is, they've created the lowest common
denominator of free speech around the world because we're now living under
North Korea's rules.

Leo: Yes, so many theaters, in fact, most of the big
theaters have said, “Hey, you know what? We're not going to run this. This is
too dangerous. We don't want -” I mean, I understand that. If you're a theater
chain and these guys are saying, “We're going to create havoc in the theater if
you run this movie.” First of all, it ain't going to
be a big moneymaking movie anyway, I don't think. So they just said, “Well, in
that case, we've still got the Hobbit.”

Jason: Now it might be. After all this?

Leo: Now people are going to want to see it.

Jason: It's one of those experiences where all of the hub-bub
about it is going to attract people to it like flies.

Leo: The real truth is, this hack
is a mess. It could very well put Sony out of business. It's certainly going to
put them out of the movie business. I think there's no doubt about that.
There's now a class action lawsuit.

Jeff: Why is it that bad? What's the actual business harm?

Leo: Nobody wants to do anything with Sony. Nobody wants to
make a deal with Sony because of the risk that it will be revealed. Nobody
wants to talk to Sony, no writer, no producer, no director, no movie star. Nobody wants to work for Sony. That's enough right there, not to
mention the class action lawsuit from Sony employees. I think this is a death
blow to Sony.

Jeff: What difference would encrypted email had made? What difference would encrypted email make?

Leo: This is a very big conversation which we've had a
couple of weeks running on security. Now, ultimately, of course it's possible
to fully secure it. But it would be very difficult for Sony to do the kind of
business it did in a fully-secured environment. You can, you know, encrypt. You
can silo. You can need-to-know. You can say, for instance, we have here a
program called App Locker that you can run on Windows machines that whitelists apps. It says, “You, employee, can't do
anything that hasn't been approved by the IT department.” So those things are
all very good for security but they're kind of bad for business. Sony made a
conscious decision, perhaps wrongly, that it was more important that
information flow freely through the various divisions than that they fully
secure it. What I think they underestimated was the damage that could be done
to the business should this particular thing happen. In any event, you know,
this is just the beginning. This is really a mess. It's very bad for Sony, I
think.

By the way, Sony itself, the company, is in deep
financial straits anyway.

Jeff: That's the other thing.

Leo: I mean, it's not like this is
a robust company that can fight back. The whole thing is a mess.

Gina: I didn't realize that.

Leo: I don't - by the way, it's not at all clear if this
was North Korea, if this was a disgruntled employee. There's evidence on both
sides. So it's - you might see reports in the mainstream media that imply we know
more than we do. It's not clear. It's very hard to know who did stuff like
this. In fact, the only time hackers really get caught, almost always, is
because they boast about it. They go out in public and say, “Yes, I did that.”
If a hacker's a smart guy or works for a government and keeps his head down,
it's pretty hard, if he's any good. It can be pretty hard. We don't even know
how good the hack is because there's a complete news blockade on any
information. The FBI's not talking, Sony's not talking. We don't know how they
got in. We know more about the Target attack, for instance, than we do about
the Sony attack.

Jeff: Well, we know more about the Google attack. That one
was traced to the Chinese, right?

Leo: You know, “traced to” in a hacker attack is very
difficult. Unless somebody takes responsibility for it, it's very hard to know.
In any event, one of the things Steve Gibson said is that - well, we've gone
back and forth on this. But he said, essentially, if whoever did this and had
the skills to do this attacked almost any company in the United States, they
would have the same success. And one of the reasons I feel that that's true is, the story that came out last week that the Sans Casino
was hacked by the Iranian government. The Iranians were very unhappy with its
owner, Sheldon Adelson. Adelson is an outspoken supporter of Israel, has been
very politically active and contributed huge amounts of money to the Newt
Gingrich campaign in the last election cycle. He's really won the enmity of
Iran - oop. Looks like we lost
Jeff.

Gina: I'm still here.

Jason: I'll work on him.

Leo: I'll just finish this story. So his casino was
attacked and this is the back end operation, the thing that runs the slots, the
thing that runs security cameras, the thing that you would - look, Sony may not
have known diddly about security. There's a lot of
evidence that they never did. But you've got to think, an organization like the
Sans Casino, big in Muckow, big in Vegas, had the top
security. Because that's guarding more than a bank. That's guarding everything and it is an attack target. I mean, everybody's
hammering at them all the time, and they got hacked. I guess the point is, even
in a situation where you can presume the security was top notch, they got in.
And brought them down and cost them millions, tens of
millions of dollars.

Gina: So in pre-show, Leo, you were saying that you wouldn't
discuss - you made an editorial decision not to discuss the -

Leo: Oh, let's take a break. We're going to talk about
this.

Gina: Okay, all right.

Leo: Jeff and I are going to get into it on this one, I
have a feeling. By the way, Steve agrees with you, Jeff. He thinks there's good
reason that this information, the treasure trove of information including movie
star salaries, private emails -

Jeff: Oh, I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that.
I think there was a newsworthy test.

Leo: Okay, we'll talk about it in a sec.

Jeff: Otherwise, if you say that theft makes the information
invalid, then you've erased Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.

Leo: No, and I don't want to erase Chelsea Manning, Edward
Snowden or the Pentagon papers. There's plenty of
cases where illegally obtained material has, because of the public wheel, the
public right and need-to-know. But the public has no need to know how much Seth
Rogen made to do the Interview.

Jeff: I agree. It is really interesting, though.

Leo: Well, then, it's such bad
gossip. It's like looking at the naked pictures of J-Law. Don't do it.

Jeff: It is.

Leo: Although, I looked at those too. So I got no standing
on this one.

Jeff: I didn't.

Gina: Ah, I did so well and then I stumbled upon them
accidentally and I felt awful.

Leo: It's hard to turn away.

Gina: I clicked on a hashtag that I hadn't recognized and I
was like, “Oh.”

Leo: That's the problem with this, isn't it?

Gina: Yes.

Leo: But I just feel - so we editorial - I guess we're in
this, so I won't do the Harry's ad quite yet. We editorially, I unilaterally
but I do own the company so I can make that decision. I said, “We're not going
to talk about the contents.” Clearly this hack is a big story for us. It's a
technology story, it's huge. But I don't think there's any reason why we should
talk about the content. Initially, I did a little bit, like, “Hey!” One factoid that I thought.

Jeff: Well, the story on the rundown is, “But the
entertainment industry strategy against or in favor of SOPA/PIPA, against
Silicon Valley.” That's pretty darn -

Leo: We'll talk about that. Sony's reacting in ways that I
think are illegal, or at least borderline illegal.

Gina: But that's the contents, that's part of the contents of these documents. That's newsworthy to this show, so is
that something you wouldn't talk about?

Leo: No, we'd report on that. I just wouldn't say - in
fact, Steve gave a list of the kinds of information that was leaked out. I
think that's fine. It's the information itself. It's fine for me to say, “Naked
pictures of Jennifer Lawrence were stolen.” It's not fine for me to show them.
Now, the news media didn't show them because there's limits to what you can do on TV. They would've loved to, are you kidding? So in this
case, there's no nudity, so of course. I think it's very self-serving for most
of them to say, “Oh no, there's a public need-to-know on this.” So let's talk
about what the need-to-know is. There's lots of other news, including the
Google changelog. This is going to be an eight hour show, though, if I don't do
a commercial.

Gina: Do it.

Leo: Did you know, there is a
relationship between the commercials and the length of the show? The shortest
show we can do is three minutes. All right, so this is Harry's.

I love Harry's. You love Harry's too, I hear, Jeff.

Jeff: I do love Harry's. Harry's is so good, and I'm not
being paid to say this, though Leo does pay me a little bit.

Leo: But I'm not paying you to say that. You can say
anything you want.

Jeff: Yes, I use Harry's. Now frankly, my baby-like skin,
for the first time I used the Harry's razor with no lotion, no nothing, just
the razor.

Leo: What? You're a madman.

Jeff: After I got out of the shower, I just swabbed the
neck.

Leo: That is testament to Harry's. How many blades could
you do that with? So Harry's bought the factory. That's what I love. That's
what I think the real story here. Harry's was started by a couple of guys who
really felt like the old adage, “You give away the razor and you make it up on
the blades,” isn't very nice to consumers. They felt like you deserve a good
shave at a fair price. Razor blades from Gillette, $4 each. Harry's, half that. But are they worse? No, they're better, because Harry's
actually bought their own German factory. They make their own blades from
scratch taking high-grade steel, grinding it, to sending it right to your door.
There's no middle man. You are essentially buying the blades from the factory
and these are beautifully made blades. In fact, if you go to Harrys.com, you
can see the whole story. They found out that there were only two factories in
the world, both of them in Germany, that can make
high-quality blades. So they bought one of them and the factory continues to
make other kinds of things. But it produces millions of precision razor blades
every year. That means you're going to get great blades and in fact, they're
doing research to make them even better, which I love. You're going to get them
at a very fair price, the actual cost, and they ship them to your door. Now,
the best way to start Harry's is with a kit. We've got some great Harry's kits.
That's what we sent out to all of our hosts. This is the Harry's Winston kit,
which is - how much is the Winston? Winston is, I think, $20?

Jason: It is on the site for $25.

Leo: $25, but I'm going to give you $5 off, so $20. What do
you get? You get the handle, now this is the less expensive. They've got a nice
metal, engraved handle where you can get your initials on it. That's what I
have at home. But Steve prefers this because it has a flat back so you can
really tell the orientation just by touch. I guess Steve shaves in the dark. You
get this, you get three blades, three of these great
Harry's blades. They're really remarkable. You get the Harry's shave cream, and
they have a cream or a gel. I like the cream. This is the foaming shave gel,
just smells really good. By the way, they now have, if you like that scent,
their aftershave lotion, too, to soothe your face after you shave. Don't
overlook the travel protector. My first couple of Harry's kits, I just threw it
out. I thought, “That's not important.” It's very important. This is how you
travel with your Harry's razor and blade so you don't get cut. You put it in
your dopp kit there and it dries out. It's got little
ventilation. This is like the best thing ever.

Somebody in the chatroom said, “I bought two more kits
so I get a couple more travel adapters.” We're going to save you $5 off your
first order. That means $20 for the kit, three blades, the handle, the travel
protector, the shave cream. The Winston set is awesome, take a look at that too. That's $25. What's the Truman? Truman is like, less?

Jason: Yes, I think it is less. Let's see here, $15.

Leo: The Truman is $15, so if you take $5 off, that's $10!

Jason: I've got the Truman. I love it.

Leo: The Truman's great! $10, that's like two blades from
Gillette. You get all of this. Just do me a favor, just try that. $10, what are
you going to lose? And if you decide you like it, you can get the subscription
plans and get your blades delivered to your door. I am up to my third or fourth
Harry's handle. I like having Harry's everywhere I go. Harry's, the best shave
you will ever have. Take $5 off, use the offer code TWIG at purchase.

So you don't disagree. We don't disagree. What
information - now, Steve Gibson said, “Okay, here is the public's right to know
on this leaked information. If we don't show the pain, we don't talk about all
the things the hackers learned in detail, then no one's going to learn this
lesson and other companies are going to fall in the same way.”

Jeff: Oh, I think they're going to learn.

Leo: I think they learned their lesson. If you still think it's okay to get hacked, I don't think you're paying
attention. Then it doesn't matter what we report. But you agree, there's no
reason James Franco's salary - there's no public interest in knowing that.
There's gossipy interest.

Leo: Aaron Sorkin said, “You're
helping the Sony hackers if you print that stuff.” And you are, really. You're
helping them achieve their aims.

Jeff: You're feeding the trolls.

Leo: You're feeding the trolls. Trolls, by the way, won in
this case, because The Interview has now been canceled.

Jeff: It has now been canceled

Leo: If that was actually their goal. See, I don't know if
that was actually their goal. Aaron Sorkin has a
little bit of a dog in this hunt because he, of course, wrote the Jobs movie.
Our good friend, and I love her, Christina Warren,
film girl, wrote a very long piece for Mashable in which using email she found
in the hacked trove of data, told the whole story of the Jobs movie that Aaron Sorkin wrote. The ins and outs, the ups and downs, and why
Sony eventually passed on it, which is of great interest, especially to our
audience who has interest in the movie. But I don't think - we didn't report this
data and I don't think we ever will report this data. I don't want to support
the hack. I think it's stolen material.

Jeff: But, you know, Leo, I do get torn. I'm a journalist so
you know I love a scoop. But it's not just a scoop, it's the idea. We go back
to the right to be forgotten issue. It's that my fear is, what if somebody
tried to pass a law and say that if you did reveal this information, that
itself is a crime. We don't believe in that, otherwise every leak and every
whistleblower leak to a journalist would then become illegal by the precedent.
So I think we have to be careful about how we regulate this, not to regulate
it. But it goes back to a question of us negotiating new norms. It's wrong to -
you know, I said this on the show some months ago. I saw the beginnings of a
new norm and people saying, on their own, “It's wrong to share and wrong to
look at the beheading videos. It's wrong to share and wrong to look at Jennifer
Lawrence photos.” Now I'm hearing people say, with some debate, “It's wrong to
share and wrong to look at the Sony leak material unless there is public
interest.” So we're trying to negotiate a new norm of behavior around it.

Leo: Now, there is some information that might have public
interest. For instance, the way Sony looked the other way in cases of sexual
harassment and so forth.

Jeff: Or the campaign about SOPA/PIPA, I think, is
legitimate public interest.

Leo: They used the code word “goliath” to describe Google.
They saw Google as the enemy, much as the Spanish publishers do. Because Google
was, apparently, you could search Google for BitTorrent links. So they did a lot of stuff to try and shut down Google. So you're right,
that is newsworthy. I think that there's a right to know that.

Gina: Okay, so we actually all do agree, then.

Leo: Yes.

Gina: The difference between this and the Snowden leak is
that Snowden leaked to a trusted journalist and just released bits and pieces
of the things. I mean, Snowden redacted or held back a lot of stuff.

Leo: It makes you really appreciate what he did.

Jeff: No, he - well, what he did was, he gave it to the
journalist and said, “It's your job to do that.” Assange,
off and on, has done that. But it's said that there is a role of redaction and
responsibility, and it's expected that's the role of journalists.

Leo: I just feel like this is kind of that link baity world we live in now, where anything goes as long as
you get clicks. There's a lot of people practicing as
journalists who aren't really thinking about the larger picture.

Jeff: Amen, and that's the business model. The business
model is an old mass media business model reaching frequency, unique users and pageviews, clicks for the sake of clicks and unless we have
metrics and business models built around quality, we are doomed to go down into
the sewer. I couldn't agree more. But I do see hope for new business models.
That's part of what I think I want Google to invent. If you want to help news,
Google, invent new business models, because, hell, you've invented them before, that encourage quality instead of just clicks.

Leo: Now, this was a big test for Nick Denton, by the way,
Gina. It kind of went both ways because on the one hand, Gawker had some actual
reporting, some good stuff. But they also took this as an opportunity to talk a
lot of gossip. A lot of gossip.

Gina: Yes. I mean, you know, it depends on what your
definition of newsworthy is, right? I mean, this is what it is.

Leo: They were doing great stuff on Ferguson. They were
really starting to do some really good reporting. Then they have a story on how
much pizza Jennifer Lawrence ordered when she was hanging out with her new
beau. So it's like, “Oh.” I don't know.

Gina: There isn't - I didn't see that one. There isn't harm
in that. I actually think that there's harm in people looking at her photos but
the pizza thing, eh. I don't know. So much of this depends on the publication.

Jeff: But there's no news.

Gina: Right. About the pizza thing? I haven't seen the story so I don't know.

Leo: The pizza comes from a source, not from the leaked
material itself.

Jeff: Oh, okay.

Leo: I apologize, Nick. That was a legit gossip story. He
says, “Tomorrow's news is today's gossip,” or something.

Jeff: At the bottom of Google, I just put up the Sony
statement.

Leo: Wow. I still don't know if it's clear – I mean, it feels like the hackers have taken this opportunity to
look like they're North Korea, but I still don't feel like they are. Here's the
Sony statement. Sony says, “In light of the decision by the majority of our
exhibitors not to show the film The Interview, we have decided not to move
forward with the planned December 25 theatrical release. We respect and
understand our partners' decision and, of course, completely share their
paramount interest in the safety of employees and theater-goers. Sony Pictures
has been the victim of an unprecedented criminal assault against our employees,
our customers and our business. Those who attacked us stole our intellectual
property, private emails, sensitive and proprietary material, and sought to
destroy our spirit and our morale, all apparently to thwart the release of a
movie they did not like. We're deeply saddened at this brazen effort to
suppress the distribution of a movie and in the process, do damage to our company,
our employees and the American public. We stand by our filmmakers in the right
to free expression and are extremely disappointed by the outcome.”

Jeff: So I just tweeted, “Sony, if you put this up online, I
pledge right now I will pay to watch it no matter how bad it is.”

Leo: Interesting.

Gina: Just to make a point, yes. It feels like this is an
opportunity for them to distribute this movie digitally, right? Everyone would
want to watch it.

Leo: Do you think, really, this is the North Korean
government that did this hack as the Guardians of Peace? It doesn't feel like
it. It feels like this is some 18-year-old slob sitting in his apartment in
Bucharest.

Jeff: With terabytes and terabytes of data?

Leo: Oh, sure. Nowadays, that's no big deal.

Jeff: Let me ask you a bigger question, Leo. Is any business
safe? You said people don't want to do business with Sony. Well, why would
people want to do business with any company? Any company is vulnerable. We
don't know how this was done.

Leo: I suspect one of the side effects of this will be, and
we were talking about this with Steve, will be to move us back to a
pre-internet era where most of the conversations that you want to keep secure
will be done either on the phone or in person. You're not going to see -

Jeff: Oh God. I've got to get a fax machine.

Leo: Yes, you're not going to commit it to email. By the
way, I'm now being told that I need to apologize to Romania. I'm sorry,
Romania.

Jeff: I thought you said Bulgaria.

Leo: I said Bucharest.

Jeff: Okay, right.

Leo: It's just a city with a funny name, folks. It's not –
and Garner, are you in Romania or you just decided to be a policeman to the
world? Anyway.

Gina: Yes, I mean, what could Sony have done differently?
They could have used – they could encrypt that stuff.

Leo: They could have encrypted the email, which means that
it's hard to forward and of course, the way it works in Hollywood, as you can
even see if you look at these emails. There's a lot of stuff circulated to
larger groups and stuff. That's not going to work.

Jeff: Hold on right there, Leo. I never thought of that and
it's obvious, I think you just presumed it, but somebody like me. If you
encrypt email, it's harder to forward.

Leo: It's one to one.

Jeff: Duh, right? Oh, wow.

Leo: So there's certainly things you can do but in every
case, and this is what Steve's always talking about, there's due tradeoff
between security and convenience. Sony decided, I think consciously, it's more
important that we be able to work, do our business than it is that we secure
our stuff. After all, how bad could it be? And unfortunately, we now know how
bad it could be. But honestly, if you think about it, the reason this movie is
being canceled has nothing to do with the hack. The reason this movie is being
canceled is because somebody, maybe even somebody different, has threatened the
movie theaters that if they release it, there will be a 9/11 style incident.
It's like a bomb threat. It has nothing to do with the hack, might not even be
the same people.

Jeff: Hm.

Leo: No, it doesn't. Anybody could have done this. That
actually could be the North Koreans going, “Hey, here's our chance.”

Jeff: Now let's pull it further. Now let's say, Sony says,
“Okay, we'll put in online.” What does Apple say? You going
to sell it on iTunes? Apple's going to say, “Eh, no thanks.” What's
Amazon going to say?

Leo: It's just a movie.

Jeff: What's the one way you could distribute this? BitTorrent.

Gina:BitTorrent, mhm.

Leo: By the way, one of the things the GOP, the hackers,
did is they put BitTorrent – they turned the Sony
service into BitTorrent service for the movies.
You're not the only one arguing for this, by the way.

Jeff: We shouldn't laugh.

Leo: No. Hey, so an interesting associated story with Reddit. Sony sent a DMCA to Reddit. Reddit was publishing, in one of its subreddits or several of its subreddits,
contents from the email trove. Sony sent a DMCA takedown request and Reddit agreed. They took it down.

Jeff:Reddit had to agree.

Leo: They didn't have any choice, right? Now they're
starting to ban users that are sharing Sony hacked documents. Reddit is mainstream media, let's not forget. They were
bought be Conde Nast I guess Conde spun them off but there's still some association, right?

Gina: But creepshots of teenage
girls, those are totally okay.

Leo: Those, no problem. So discussion in new stories
regarding the hack will still be allowed throughout the site, but Sony has been
sending notices warning of legal action against the posting of information
discovered by the hacked documents. So in theory, they could send us one if we
had started talking about the content, as well. That's not why I didn't and I
actually don't celebrate these heavy handed techniques from Sony. I sympathize
but -

Leo: It is wild, isn't it? You know what, I want to cheer everybody up. Let's do the Google changelog right after this
word about my shoes. You want to do that?

Gina: Yes.

Leo: So, Jeff, we haven't sent you any Jack Erwins yet. But you're a professor, you don't walk into class using sandals with socks, right?

Jeff: I have weird feet.

Leo: What do you mean, weird?

Jeff: Do you really want to know?

Leo: No.

Gina: No, we're good.

Leo: That's TMI.

Gina: I'd rather hear about prostate, I think.

Jeff: That was the limit, right, Gina?

Gina: Yes, yes.

Leo: Finally. We can know about your colon but your feet,
no. So shoes, they say, make the man and I have to say there are times when
having a nice pair of shoes on your feet is going to help you, on a date, at
the Christmas party when you're talking to the boss for a raise, when you're
talking to venture capitalists for funding. You don't want to be wearing the tennie runners. You want to be wearing some nice shoes.
Yes, these are comfortable. Don't feel like you're going to be hobbling around.
These are beautiful. You know what? The real problem is, you're going to wear
these and you're never going to want to wear anything else. These are Jack Erwins.

Now, normally, shoes like these, handmade in Spain of
the finest leathers from the traditional leather craftsmen in France and Italy, handsewn uppers, handsewn lowers, leather soles. Normally shoes like these would cost you a pretty penny.
You get them about a third of the cost at JackErwin.com because they sell
direct to you. Although, you New Yorkers, you. They have a showroom in New York
so you might want to stop by. These are beautiful shoes. You just go to
JackErwin.com/twit and you can see our picks. I have been
loving these Jack Erwin shoes. I want to warn you, because people are
going to say, “Oh, it's $200.” But that is, for a shoe
of this quality – I know, you've only been wearing Nikes worth $140. So you pay
a little more but these are all leather. These are beautiful. They last
forever.

Every pair of Jack Erwin shoes comes with a second pair
of insoles made in Portugal and a beautiful travel bag. You can carry your Jack Erwins in your suitcase without fear of damage. I
love my Jack Erwins. If you do order, order one size
smaller than you do usually. If you're a size 10, order a size 9, because all
Jack Erwin shoes are made one size larger so that you have a scosh more room. If you've never had a great pair of shoes,
you owe it to yourself to have a great pair of shoes from Jack Erwin. They have
striving moccasins, too. I'm going to get those for myself for Christmas.
JackErwin.com/twit, the best shoes you've ever worn. By the way, if you don't like
them, shipping's free and it's easy to return them. They'll pay the shipping. JackErwin.com/twit. “Don't buy cheap, it's too expensive,”
said Grandpa. Right?

Gina: They sure are spiffy. They're spiffy looking.

Leo: Oh, Gina. Gina, these are great shoes. Ladies and
gentlemen, it's time for the Google Changelog.

Voiceover: The Google Changelog.

Leo: Gina Trapani has the latest in Google.

Gina: New feature on your Chromecast. Your friends can come
over and cast to your Chromecast without connecting to your WiFi first.

Leo: Damn it!

Gina: Yes, it's called Guest Mode.

Leo: “Get off my Chromecast!”

Gina: I know, the gadget headline
is that “Guest Mode lets anyone commandeer your TV.” It's not quite as
aggressive as all that. This is often, of course, if you want to enable Guest
Mode on your Chromecast, you can open up the Chromecast app. You tap Devices
and you select your Chromecast and you turn on Guest Mode. Then anyone can walk
in and cast, you know, the hip video.

Leo: Oh, you have to enable it.

Gina: You have to enable it, exactly. But nice for the
holidays, throw some YouTube videos up on the TV, on relative's TV.

Leo: I've been doing so much Chromecasting lately. I love it.

Gina: Yes, Chromecast is great. It's still my main media
thing.

Leo: It's how I watch YouTube now.

Gina: Yes. Me too, I love it.

Jeff: That's how you're going to watch The Interview.

Leo: I'm going to watch The Interview on my Chromecast. Can
I just say, it looks like a terrible movie?

Gina: Oh, it looks awful. I was trying not to say that
because that's not the point. But it looks terrible. It looks terrible.

Leo: I'll tell you what is the point in
the way, because if this were the Hobbit, I don't think there would be
that rush to not run it.

Jeff: Well, The Neighbors was just awful. Did you see The
Neighbors?

Gina: Oh no. That also looked terrible.

Leo: The end of the world movie they made? Oh my God, was
it bad. So it's like that.

Gina: It's not the point, though. It's not the point. It's
art. Let's see what else we got.

Inbox, the app that I'm dying to use
with my Google Apps account. Google, I know you're listening. They got a little new feature in Assist. So
they've got this feature called Assist, which helps you, gives you kind of
contextual information as you enter reminders into Inbox. Well, Assist is
getting a new kind of boost, a suggest as you type
based on what you're entering. So for example -

Leo: I just got that.

Gina: Oh, you just got it? It's really cool. So it's killing
me, because I really want to use Inbox on a daily basis. So if you tap Compose
and say, I'm going to start a reminder. I started to type the word “return” and
the Assist actually started to auto-fill items that I had just ordered from
Amazon and had just been shipped to me. So it's amazing. It's really, really
smart, personal contextual information. Saying, “Oh, I want to return this
thing I just ordered.” It works with local businesses, it works with calling
people. You know, “Remind me to email Jeff about lunch next month,” which we
have to do, Jeff. It will fill it in and put Jeff's contact information. You'll
know it's an Assist when there's a little icon in the suggest as you type drop down.

Jeff, did I cut you off? Did you have a question?

Jeff: No, I was just making a joke that we're going to hear
immediately that this new feature is creepy.

Gina: It's the most convenient creepy thing you'll ever see.
Hangouts and Gmail got updated. You can now set a status message. So if you log
into Gmail on the desktop and you turn on Hangouts, you can click on your name
and set your status to whatever you want, “Happy Holidays. I'm available. I'm
out walking the dog.” Whatever. I think you can also
use emoticons and stickers as well. I think I saw that in some of the examples.
So people will see your status in their friends list.

A couple of Google Drive updates. You can now share
Google Drive files through Gmail as attachments and not those share links
where, you know, you use the wrong Gmail address for the person and they say
they don't have access and, “Can you give me access?” It's all a complete pain.
You can now share Google Drive files and it just attaches it to the Gmail and
sends the whole file through email when you select the “Insert as attachment”
option from Google Drive. So that's handy.

Leo: Yay.

Jeff: Yay.

Gina: Because I love Google Drive and I love sharing but I
also have a couple of Google accounts and people always share to me using the
wrong one.

Next up, the Google app on Android has voice search for
Google Drive. So you can say, “Okay, Google. Search for,” a certain file name
on Drive and you'll get your file without opening the app or typing keywords.

Google Fit got an update that brings 100 new activities
to the app. So Google Fit can automatically detect if you're walking or biking.
Now, you can manually enter activities like skiing, skating, biathlon,
volleyball, circuit training, boxing, cricket, dancing. So when you go to the
gym, you can hop right into Google Fit and have that be your kind of one stop shop
for all your activities. Of course, manual entry, not the most convenient thing
in the world but nice if you want to use Google Fit for everything. Another
upgrade to Google Fit, the Google Fit app is, new
Android ware support. So Google's still calling things experimental here but
your smart watch will measure your step count when it's not connected to your
phone. The watch will remember and sync it up to your phone's history the next
time it reconnects. So that's really nice if you want to go for a run without
carrying your big phablet.

Finally, Google for Android and iOS got updated with
Nest integration. So you can now set the temperature of your home through
Google Now. You can say, of course, if you have a Nest, and you have it set up
and you've opted in. On your mobile device, you can open your Google app or tap
the mic and say, “Okay, Google. Set the temperature to 70 degrees.” And your
Nest will do that. If you try that search right now and you don't have it set
up, it will give you a prompt that says, “This works with Nest,” and you can
tap through and actually configure your nest to work with that. So obviously,
it doesn't work unless you've opted in and your Nest is set up.

And that's it. That's all I got.

Leo: And that is the Google Changelog.

Jeff: Well, a few updates as well. While
we were away at the Changelog. One is that Deadline reports that a Steve Carell new regency thriller set in North Korea has
been cancelled.

Leo:Oy.

Jeff: Newt Gingrich tweets, “No one should kid themselves.
With the Sony collapse, America has lost its first cyber war. This is a very,
very dangerous precedent.”

Leo: I wonder if this is cyber warfare. I wonder.

Jeff: Well, it kind of doesn't matter because the weapons of
cyber warfare aren't necessarily in the hands of government. So anybody can
declare war.

Leo: That's true. That's a very good point. So it doesn't
really matter if this is North Korea.

Jeff: In this future era, the power of government diminishes
immensely because whether you're Anonymous, or Occupy, or GOP or whoever, you
have tools in your hand that you don't need to be a government to have any
more.

Leo: Wow.

Jeff: Not saying that Anonymous, or Occupy or anybody are doing that or anything else. I'm just saying that, okay.

Leo: I can imagine a very ugly future where this stuff is
just going on all the time. It could have been worse, though. They could have
attacked the power grid or something. I mean, it's just Sony Pictures. Let's
get this straight.

Jeff: It's just Seth Rogen.

Leo: It's just Seth Rogen and James Franco.

Gina: Ryan Bishop at the Verge just put up a piece, “Why
Sony Pictures should release the Interview online.” Not even North Korea can
stop the internet. It does kind of feel like, at this point, the only way we
can prove that this was -

Leo: We need to invoke the Streisand effect.

Gina: Yes, just get it out.

Jeff: But I'm serious, how? If you're Apple, are you going
to come along now and say, with stores in every mall, say, “Okay, we'll put the
movie up on iTunes?” No.

Leo: No, you said it. BitTorrent.

Jeff: But then you don't make any money on it.

Gina: At this point, I think they should just release it for
download for free. Everybody gets to watch it.

Leo: This is how you screw North Korea. Say, “Well, good.
More people are going to see this now.”

Jeff: Here's the thing I wonder. There's an interesting
discussion just on Twitter, Leo. Because I said, “I wonder who owns the
insurance on the movie and what clauses are being invoked.” Somebody said,
“Well, there's usually a terrorism exception.” That goes to your point. Is this
terrorism in an insurance sense?

Leo: Usually insurance is a completion bond. The movie was
completed. I don't know if they have insurance for this.

Jeff: I wonder.

Leo: Interesting. Well, all I can say is that hacker in the
basement in Bucharest has now moved to Budapest. Take that.

Jeff: Where our ambassador said the new head of government
is a schmuck. We're going to be in trouble for that.

Leo: The year in Search 2014. Now, this is a happy, bright,
upbeat story.

Gina: This is good.

Leo: Google does this every year. Do they still do
Zeitgeist? Is that now – does this replace that?

Jeff: Yes.

Gina: Yes, I think this is a part of it.

Leo: Every year, they say, “We reflect on moments that made
us laugh, smile ear to ear or stay gripped to our screens in our annual year in
Search.” (video starts) Ladies and gentlemen, in 2014
we searched trillions of times. What do these searches say about us? “We search
for... hope.” Ah, Malala, Nobel Prize winner. Fear.Science.More than fiction. That's
fiction, by the way, the hoverboard. “We search for
things we love.” Ferrell, House of Cards, Game of Thrones, Nicki Minaj and for greatness. Sochi. “We searched to make
sense.” Oh wow. Ferguson, ebola.

Gina: Ebola, wow.

Leo: “We search to remember.” Joan Rivers, Maya Angelou,
Robin Williams. “We search to be inspired.” This is really just an ad. I love
this dancing guy.

Jeff: Yes, that's true.

Leo: There's Benedict Cumberbatch getting doused with ice
water, and that's what I've been waiting for. You know, this reminds me a lot
of, and we spent some time talking about it on TWiT,
the YouTube year ender. The Rewind, which really celebrated
all the YouTube starts. This is the things we searched for but there are
many viral videos in there.

Gina: This is the old person version. Like, I recognized
everything in this one.

Leo: You're right. I had no idea who those YouTube stars
were. I actually had to ask a 12-year-old. Michael knew. He knew at least half
of them, he said, “Oh yeah, that's that. That's that.” I only knew iJustine. So here are the top global searches of 2014.
Robin Williams, number one. World Cup, number two.Ebola, number three. MH-3701, the Malaysian airlines flight
they still haven't found.

Jeff: Even Google can't find it, sorry.

Leo: Even Google can't search for that one. ALS, the ice bucket challenge. This year, that was the thing
of the year, wasn't it? Flappy Bird made it to the top ten? Number six, Flappy
Bird?

Gina: That was this year? I guess it was.

Leo:ConchitaWurst,
the winner of the Eurovision song contest. ISIS and I hope people weren't
searching for beheading videos but somehow, I feel like they were. Frozen, the Disney movie.Finally, Sochi. So that's a pretty good mix of the big – you know, this is all done
programmatically, but those are the big stories.

Gina: Yes.

Leo: Those really are the big stories. Then they have a
nice little page at Google.com/2014 that you can scroll through. I like it when
they do this, I really do. This is fun. What is La Decima? Touchdowns,
knockouts, trophies, Formula One royalty. This is very global, right? Because Formula One is big worldwide, US less so. 1:15:19.3?? Jared Leto into
Instagram.

Gina: Not sure how Jared Leto made
it here, but okay. Yes, I don't know.

Leo: Okay. By the way, that's a Facebook property, isn't
it? Yes.

Gina: Yes.

Jeff: They're not a bad -

Leo: You see? You see? You see?

Gina: Yes, there and there.

Leo: They don't mind. ConchitaWurst, the man who rose like a phoenix.

Jeff: Did you ever watch? You know who that is?

Leo: I didn't, yes. She won the Eurovision song contest but
is she a man, or -

Jeff: Exactly.

Leo: I don't understand. I'm confused. But that's pretty
much my life nowadays.

Jeff: Did you ever watch ConchitaWurst?

Leo: No. I mean, I think I might've seen a video.

Jeff: Amazing, yes.

Leo: There she is. That's Tom Neuwirth.

Gina: His stage persona, he developed a character.

Leo: He created a character. So it is a guy, he's not
transgender. He's a guy who has a character.

Jeff: Right.

Gina: I honestly hadn't heard of this at all until this.

Leo: Most searched beauty secrets, “beard” is number one by a long shot. The world wanted more. “The beard is a
statement to say you can achieve anything, no matter who you are or how you
look.” That's why I'm growing a beard.

Gina: I'm going to stop tweezing.

Leo: No more tweezing.

Gina: No more tweezing, I can be who I want to be. That was
probably more than you wanted to know.

Leo: No, no, not at all. All right, what else? Vessel, a YouTube rival - who cares? YouTube! Who cares?
There are no YouTube rivals.

Jeff: The model is that you get the videos three days early
than they go up on YouTube and you're going to pay for that privilege. I don't
suppose.

Leo: Oh, that'll work. Okay, so now here is a kind of cool
thing and I hope they roll this out for everybody. This is - you can make an
animated .gif but it's only on a couple of channels right now. So do we know
how to do this? We go to “Share.” How do I make an animated gif? This is the
channel, the Rhett and Link channel, Good Mythical Morning. But where - maybe
they don't have - oh, there it is. .gif! So you pick - this is good.

Gina: Oh, this is cool.

Leo: You can see what the .gif is going to look like.

Gina: This is how videos - this is how some TWiT stuff. See, now we have to make a lot of silly faces.

Leo: I'm good with that, I don't mind. Okay, let's do some.

Jeff:Leistungsschutzrecht. Leistungsschutzrecht.

Leo: Let me just - show me here. There's a couple for you.
Just gave you some faces to work with.

Gina: There you go.

Jason: Jeff, it's your turn.

Jeff: Here's my nose. You know what I have to do, I just
said it. Leistungsschutzrecht!

Leo: I don't think there's audio on these. Maybe there is.

Jason: That's okay, because they'll do the words on the
screen thing. All right, Gina, you've got to get one.

Gina: People seem to really like when I'm like, “Ah.” People
are always like, “Oh, Gina's shaking her head again.” People like when I'm
like, “Ah.” So, there you go. That'll be my head shake.

Leo: I want to find the one - yes, here we go. The Kate
Middleton eye roll. They had this on the Daily Show. So I guess she was
wrapping gifts in New York City and she'd had enough. She is a princess. The
woman at the gift wrapping station says, “No, no, you're not done. Wrap more.”
And Kate Middleton gave her quire an eye roll there. Watch it, watch it, whoa.
What? Whoa.

Leo: She's a real princess. She apparently does this a lot,
I don't know. Anyway, that's - you can now, at least on Good Mythical Morning
or the Idea Channel, according to this article from Shawn Buckley at enGadget. Or maybe it was from Gizmodo. Or maybe it was
from Wax Pancake, Andy Byo. I guess it was, so I
think that's cool.

Gina: While we're talking about .gifs, I have to plug Adam Pash, who was my co-editor at Lifehacker.
He does andtheniwaslike.co. You can use your webcam and make a .gif of yourself.

Leo: That's his? I love that? We showed that a couple of
months ago.

Gina: Yes. I had to bring that up again because it's an easy
way to do your own eye roll.

Leo: It's called, andtheniwaslike.co.

Gina: And then I was like, yes.

Leo: So I don't think we have it yet on our TWiT channels. But you'll see, when you click the “Share”
link, share, embed, email and then you'll see .gif or “jiff” depending on how
you say it.

Gina: Google, please enable.

Leo: Please enable. It is getting out there on more and
more channels. Do we care about the top apps, movies and music of 2014? I'm
sure you talked about the apps on All About Android,
right?

Gina: Yes, we did. We talked at least about Google's lists.

Jason: I'm not sure we talked about this one specifically.
They had a section on the Play Store a few weeks ago that was like, “Our
favorite apps of the year.” But I don't know if that's pulling from the same
list.

Gina: Oh, I see. They did another, “Best stuff of the year.”

Jason: They did like their official top -

Leo: Best stuff of the year, most downloaded apps. Duolingo in
Education.My Fitness Pal in Health and Fitness.Pandora in Music.Flipogram in Photography.Facebook in Social.Netflix in
Entertainment.NFL Mobile in Sports.Tripadvisor in
Travel.The year's fastest growing app category,
Health and Fitness. And the top games of 2014 won't surprise you much,
either, Candy Crush Saga, number one. Then, Don't Tap the White Tile, which is
a lot of fun.

Gina: Flappy Bird isn't on here.

Jason: Neither is Monument Valley. I would have guessed that
one.

Leo: Farm Heroes Saga, Subway Surfers and Clash of Clans.
Play games, users unlock 3.5 billion achievements this year. Top
movie of the year, Frozen, which was purchased on the Google Play Store. The Walking Dead, top TV show. The comeback movie, the Toy
Story. And the most searched actor on Google Play, of course, Robin
Williams. Album of the year, the motion picture soundtrack
from Frozen. Clearly a lot of parents use Google Play. Song of the year, Dark Horse by Katy Perry. Song of the
summer, You're So Fancy by Iggy Azalea. “I'm so
fancy...” Fastest growing genre, soundtracks, fueled by Frozen, Guardians of
the Galaxy, Despicable Me 2, the Lego Movie and the Great Gatsby soundtracks.
Ah, this is one for you, Leistungsschutzrecht. A news
sources of the year. New York Times is number one, followed by TMZ, number two.

Jeff: Oh, Jesus.

Leo: Forbes now number three!

Jeff: At least Buzzfeed's not
there.

Leo: It isn't. The Verge.

Jeff: Which actually has some legitimate journalism,
that surprises me.

Leo: Beast, Journal, Gizmodo and Droid Central. The most
read article of 2014, Flavor Pill, “1590s Teen Heartthrobs Who Have Resurfaced
on TV”.

Gina: What?

Leo: Well, three of them are listicles.

Gina: What is happening?

Leo: Then, Mental Floss, “50 More Awesome Facts About Everything.” Then Market Watch, “10 Most Miserable
Cities in America.” Howes, which I really like, I'm
glad to see it's getting some traction, “Bathroom Workbook, How Much Does a
Bathroom Remodel Cost?” Now we're talking. That's the news you can use.
Finally, the Verge awards the best of CES 2014.

Jeff: There's no Iraq there.

Leo: Book of the Year, The Fault Is In Our Stars. That's a
young adult that was made into a movie. 50 Shades of Gray, that's an old adult
that was made into a movie. Divergent, that was a
young adult that was made into a movie. 12 Years a Slave,
that was just depressing but true. Insurgent, which I
don't remember. So there you go.

Jason: Is 50 Shades a movie yet?

Leo: No, soon to be a major motion picture despite the crap
casting. Now, North Korea, if you tried to block that, I wouldn't get in your
way. No, I'm joking.

Jeff: The S&M army will come after it.

Leo: Just want to make sure we don't miss anything. That's
a sad story, the OnePlus One story out of India. I'm sure you talked about it
on All About Android, the Cyanogen mod made a deal -
terrible. An exclusive deal with another company and Micromax is now complaining about OnePlus sales in India and they faulted them. Terrible.

Gina: Aw, man.

Leo: That sucks. Nexus 5, what is going on there? Is Google
going to continue to sell that? Apparently so. There
are a limited number in stock but they are saying, “We're going to continue to
sell it into early 2015.” This is because a lot of people who want a Nexus
phone say, “I'm not buying that giant whale of a phone.”

Gina: Right, it's their small phone.

Jeff: Further, if you try to buy the darn thing in the Play
Store, you can't still.

Leo: Is it still out of stock? What do they say?

Jeff: Going to check, right now it's still out of stock.

Jason: Yes, which was fueling rumors that
they just were stopping all together.

Jeff: Oh, this is 6.

Leo: The 6 you still can't get? Well, can I just share a
little problem, just a word of warning about the Nexus 6? It's very easy to root, of course, you can very easily unlock the Bootlooter and root it. I found a one-step root and unlock.
But remember, Google - and I am really questioning this decision. But they
decided they wanted to do an Apple and make it hard for law enforcement to see
what's on your phone. So they have encrypted this phone. Remember, if you've
used Android before, you know that after the fact, you can go into settings and
say if you're giving it a pin or password, I want to encrypt it from then on.
This comes encrypted, which caused me a bit of a hassle now because I've rooted
it and I have a special recovery. I've got Twerp recovery on here. I got 501
this morning, I was so excited.

By the way, I got it on the watch too, Jason.

Jason: Yes, I got my notice but it's not charged up yet.

Leo: Me neither, too low.

Gina: Oh, that's a killer.

Jason: This is the one moment out of all the days in the year
where I regret the fact that I can't plug just any micro-USB into this.

Leo: I have two Qi chargers in my office that work. You can
put it on the Qi chargers in there.

Jason: That'll work. All right, I'll do that.

Leo: That's what so great about the Moto 360 is, it
supports Qi.

Jason: Yes, which I love.

Leo: So that weird cradle is a standard Qi charger and you
have to position it carefully. But if you position it just right, you can
charge the watch on a Qi charger. Good news. However, I was talking about this
and I'm screwed. Because I rooted it and now, in order to install 501, Twerp is
saying, “What's the password for the encryption?” I don't know. I didn't give
it a password. No, it's not your Google account password, is it? It's nothing.

Jeff: That's what I was trying to joke before, trying to
imagine what Google's own password is.

Leo: Maybe it is, actually. I didn't try my Google Account
password. I should try it. I shouldn't say it's not. Did they use a password
when they encrypted it? They must have, right?

Leo: This is a great article by Amy Graff of the San
Francisco Chronicles website, SF Gate in which she debunks this bogus list from
CNN of 28 internet acronyms everyone should know. She did the research. She
looked them up on Urban Dictionary. These kids aren't using these. “IWSN - I
want sex now.”

Jeff: Now!

Leo: “GNOC - Get naked on camera. CU46 - See you for sex.”

Gina: That's it, we're going Amish. We can't - no.

Leo: “THOT – That hoe over there.” No one uses these. These
are made up. Sugar pits. This is CNN, this is some old fart at CNN who found a
1997 acronym dictionary and thought it'd make a good clickbait. This is not
true, don't worry about it. Not true and she debunks it quite nicely. This is a
line from Stephen Grybowski, who is her 24-year-old
cousin but also a staffer at a New York magazine called Relix,
which is a music festival and youth culture magazine. He says, “CNN has no idea
what sexting is, but they’re pretty sure it has something to do with acronyms.”
I love it. Anyway, don't worry, Gina. The kids are not having sex.

Gina: Thank you. Thank you, Amy Graff.

Leo: This is a great article. Nice job, Amy. So I've
rebooted this thing now and now – foolishly, I wiped it. So now I have to start
all over again.

Jason: You're starting fresh.

Gina: I was going to say, just start fresh.

Jason: Put a little zip in your kick.

Leo: I'm hoping I'll have 501 on here. That would be really
depressing if I wiped it and there's still no – I'll let you know. Any other story
before we get to our last ad and our tip, pick and number of the week?

Jeff: Little update. So Jake Tapper, the most over-the-top
tweet I think I've seen in ages. Jake Tapper, ABC -

Leo: I like him normally.

Jeff: I normally do. His tweet is, “We are all Seth Rogen.”

Leo: Oh no, that's horrible.

Gina: No, we're not. We're really not.

Jeff: No, we're not. Seth Rogen called his dealer, man, and
he's getting a lot of weed right now.

Leo: “I can't breathe, man!” Do you think there will be a
new – no, I've got to stop.

Jeff: Michael Moore. “Dear Sony Hackers, now that u run Hollywood, I'd also like less romantic comedies, fewer
Michael Bay movies and no more Transformers.”

Leo: That's right on. I dig that.

Gina: That's pretty funny.

Leo: That's right on, man. I think we're going to be
talking about this Sony hack for a long time to come. All right, let's take a
break.

Jeff: I'm sorry, other stories. Oh, break. Break, that's
right.

Leo: Yes, if you have other stories. But keep following
that breaking news, breaking tweets.

Jeff: Celebrity tweets.

Leo: Celebrity tweets on the Sony hack, this just in.

Jeff: We've got Rob Lowe.

Leo: What does Rob Lowe have to say?

Jeff: Rob Lowe says, two tweets.
“Wow. Everyone caved, the hackers won. An utter and complete
victory for them. Wow.” Two wows. It's a two-wow tweeter. Gina right now
is rushing to find out the “wow” count in everybody's tweets.

Gina: We're counting wows.

Leo: You know, I have some
sympathy for the exhibitors because even if they had the movie, nobody's going
to go see it, right? Or would they have filled theaters? What do you think?

Jeff: Here's the way I looked at it. I would go but then,
would I take my child? No.

Leo: No! Let's not get crazy, these guys are not going to
attack.

Jeff: I know, but it's -

Leo: Who knows?

Jeff: Second late-breaking Rob Lowe tweet, “Saw @Sethrogen at JFK. Both of us have never seen or heard of
anything like this. Hollywood has done Neville Chamberlain proud today.”

Leo: Capitulation. What do they call it, when Chamberlain -

Jeff:Quizzling?

Leo: No, it wasn't a quizzling.
What did he do with Hitler? There was a word for it. Damn, I'm getting old.
That's when you're really old, when you remember the story because –
appeasement.

Jeff: The word is out there. It's like a firefly, I can get
that word. Very good.

Leo: Appeasement.

Jeff: That's why we need a chatroom to follow us around all
the time, to give us the words we don't know.

Leo: Thank God for the chatroom. That's such good stuff.
I'm mainlining the chatroom now.

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Ladies and gentlemen, Gina Trapani has our tip of the
week.

Gina: Wait, can we do one last story really quick?

Leo: Yes, yes.

Gina: Sorry, I just thought that this Microsoft Knucklehead
blog post – did you do this on our weekly?

Jeff: I put that one up there, yes.

Gina: Thank you, Jeff. This thing is just funny. So
Microsoft does a company blog post which is clearly about Google but it's weird
and like, they pulled it but it's still in Google's cache, ironically. It's
just basically saying that Google Apps is terrible compared to Office 360. But
it's got this long story about this guy's knucklehead son. Yes, if you click on
the cached version link -

Gina: Yes, and Screwgled? It's
along those lines. This post is gold. It's kind of gold. “My knucklehead son
doesn't want to go to college. No, instead he want to wander around the country
in a Volkswagen camper van posting his adventures on YouTube for legions of
adoring fans, pausing just long enough to cup his hands under a gushing spigot
of money pumped by grateful advertisers. I tell him he sounds like Google.” It
just goes from there, it's crazy, and weird and funny.
So anyway, yes, that was my last.

Leo: Thank you, Mark Pan.

Jeff: I'm going to give you one more breaking tweet. The
Situation Room! “US investigators determined North Korea is behind Sony hack,
as the Pres reports.” In fact, there's -

Leo: So then the whole GOP, Guardians of Peace thing was
probably intended to mislead.

Jeff: There was a video, I'll put
it up on the rundown right now.

Leo: That's from CNN. You know, the FBI has not been
talking about this.

Jeff: Just put up the video under – bottom of Google. Video CNN.

Jason: Oh, I see.

Leo: You'll have to get it, because I closed out.

Jeff: You're ready to say goodbye to us already, Leo?

Leo: I'm on my way home in my mind. In my mind, I'm on my
way home.

Jason: I'm getting a sign in thing for cable services.

Leo: Oh crap. Oh, I hate you, Xfinity.

Jeff: What are you doing? How does that happen, what?

Leo: You can't watch CNN unless you get CNN.

Jason: But in the embedded tweet, it appears.

Jeff: But in an embedded tweet you can?

(video plays)

Leo: Okay, so that's very light on facts.

Jeff: Of course it is. It's CNN.

Leo: So I would like to know which department of the US
government announced that and why they think that. Of course, none of that was
available. US investigators, is that the FBI?

Jeff: I don't know. Alec Ross, who was a deputy Secretary of
State under Hilary Clinton, was the social person. Very smart guy, I just put
up a link to his piece on Huffington Post where he talks about this as a cyber warfare.
Where does it stop? He is lighthearted in some ways. He says it's only a matter
of time before some hotshot group of engineers recognizes and stalls ancyber attack. Instead of calling the authorities who can't do anything, anyway. The VP of engineering orders a counterattack against the aggressor. If Sony had
a better engineering department, if it were a little more northern California
instead of southern California, I wonder what would have happened. If they'd
identified the source of the hack and shot back with a DDOS attack, would North
Koreans had considered this an invasion of the United
States or Japan, where Sony is actually headquartered?

Leo: I'm going to call BS on this CNN report. I would like
to see where they got this from.

Jeff: I don't know. I would too.

Leo: I think there's a lot of – first of all, if North
Korea did it, why would they deny they did it? Wouldn't they want to crow about
it? “I just gotta crow.”

Jeff: So this will make your head explode, just like Kim
Jong-Un's. TIME Magazine has a piece, “Three Reasons
People Think North Korea Hacked Sony,” main head. Sub head, “And Four Reasons
It Might've Been Somebody Else.”

Leo:Oy.

Jeff: Which is to say, we don't know.

Gina: We don't know anything.

Leo: I think it wasn't North Korea but I think that the
Guardians of Peace, once they sniffed that possibility, decided to play along.

Jeff: I think you're a wise voice of sanity here.

Leo: Oh, I'd just like to see more. We know so little
because they haven't revealed much.

Jeff: Sorry for that breaking interruption.

Leo: Gina, your tip of the week.

Gina: Yes, let's do our tip of the week. So, the new
Hangouts dialer app is now a full-fledged system dialer that's on Android. That
means that you can switch over to using Hangouts for your phone calls for
everything. You can say, you know, when you tap on a phone number in your email
or calendar, or whatever, you'll get prompted with
dialer you want to use. Now, Hangouts dialer, it was not before a full-fledged
system dialer that you could set to. But now it is, so you can say, “Always use
your Hangouts dialer,” and you can always use Hangouts for your phone. So moving farther and farther away from depending upon carriers for
your number and your calls.

Jeff: Gina, would you trust Hangouts as your always choice?

Gina: I do already. I mean, I use Google Voice and I
switched over to Hangouts.

Jeff: Really?

Gina: Yes, yes.

Leo: I don't do it on my phone. I do it on my desktop all
the time. That's how I make phone calls at home. I put on my headset and it
just sounds better, it's more relaxed. But my question, Google Voice was not Voip?

Gina: That's true.

Leo: This is Voip. This does not
use your minutes, it uses data only, is that right?

Gina: Yes, that's true.

Leo: So this is not the Google Voice system, this is a
different system that is data only. It's Voip. Wow,
that's great.

Gina: Yes, works great in my basement where I don't get
bars.

Leo: The only issue for me is, there's a little bit of lag,
more lag than there would be in a cell call.

Gina: Right. For me, it's almost like the lesser of two
evils, though. I mean, I feel like cell calls can be so bad, too. So it's like
on or the other. But if you do want to switch over to Hangouts, you can make
the switch. Now it's a full dialer. And of course, you get the choice, always
or just this once. So you don't have to commit to always.

Leo: I might try that. Interesting.Jeffrey, your number of the week?

Jeff: Is 20! It's the last of the three links in my numbers
section and I don't know why this fascinated me so much. I tweeted it and got tweeted like crazy. Gina will soon tell me exactly how much it got
tweeted. But I think ThinkUp already did, and it's
the Top 20 websites every December from 1996 to 2013. It's really small, but if
you just click on the chart – it doesn't work well on audio but it's a scroll
through memory lane. So 1996, two years after Netscape, AOL was top for two,
four, six, seven years. WebCrawler, Infoseek,
Prodigy, CompuServe, Umitch.edu, CMU.edu, MIT.edu. I just found out, people
were digging into this and having all kinds of fun. Trying to
remember Tripod, Switchboard, of course, AltaVista, of course, Lightcoast, of course, Infoseek.

Leo: This is really cool.

Jeff: Penthouse was a top 20 website in 1996, ha!

Leo: For one brief, shining naked moment.

Jeff: I read it for the letters, man. I read it for the
letters. AOL – (crosstalk)

Leo: By the way, right after Penthouse, Excite. So that's
appropriate.

Jeff: Now, AOL disappears in 2003 and I noted that. But
somebody said, “No, they just mixed it with Time Warner.”

Leo: Ah, that's why Time Warner is number two in 2003,
2004, 2005.

Jeff: The other thing that struck me about this is in 2013,
the last year of this, Yahoo was the top website, which also shows you that
being the top website is not necessarily a great business.

Leo: It doesn't mean much.

Jeff: Google's business is not about being a website at all.

Leo: Who is Glam Media?

Jeff: Funny you should ask, I'm an
advisor to Glam.

Leo: They're number eight on the list.

Jeff: Now they're number seven. Glam is amazing. The reason
I like Glam, Samir Arora, that's the CEO. He came into my office one day many
years ago and he read “What Would Google Do?” and he said, “I have to show you
this. You're going to understand this.” Glam is a network. Glam is 6000 sites
as a network and they sell ads across all of them and it's the power of the
network. It amazes me to this day that nobody in media has understood the power
of Glam's model. It's not about creating all your own
content, owning your own content. Glam at first was just a women's brand and it
fought against iVillage. iVillage was the queen of women online, iVillage has recently been foolishly shut down by NBCU.
Glam won, Glam has gone on to other areas, men and other things. They've done
Foodie, which is a great site. They understand how to aggregate, how to create
ad networks and nobody knows them. I was just talking to Samir only yesterday, and
their first goal was to get this – they bought Ning and they believe that every social site needs content and every content site
needs social. They're going to be doing some new things, soon, around that. So
pardon the little ad for Glam, but I think Glam is a fascinating story.

Leo: Well, it was the only one on that list I didn't know.
So there you go.

Jeff: Exactly, and they're huge and they grew huge by
creating networks to enable bloggers, basically.

Leo: That's cool. So my tool of the week kind of tags on to
something we talked about last week, Android Studio now out of beta and
available to all. Go, the language Go from Google, which is a really nice,
elegant concurrent programming language designed for web. But the confluence
is, they just released Go 1.4 and you can write Android Apps in Go.

Gina: What, really? You can write Android apps in Go?

Leo: They say simple Android apps, but I'm going to
investigate.

Gina: Yes, yes, yes, that's interesting.

Leo: It's very interesting because I hate Java. I hate it.
I don't want to use Java and I have a simple app I want to write that would be
a purpose build app for me. I want to put it on my Nexus 6 that would just do
countdown timing for the radio show. I did the Hello World, as you said. It was
very easy and I got it on my – I kind of added to that. Then I saw, oh no, I
have to write the rest of this in Java.

Gina:Wahwah.

Leo:Wahwah.
I've written in Java and I don't like it. I guess I could go back and learn it
again and do it again but I'd be much happier if it were in Go. So I will
investigate. But the newest version of Go, Go 1.4 which is the fifth release,
one of the new features is it's going to be more than kind of a system file,
system language. They're going to start supporting Android development in Go.
Much as Apple is now allowing Swift in Xcode.

Jeff: I asked last week, what makes a good language and a
bad language? I'll ask it again. Why don't you like JavaScript?

Leo: JavaScript is not what I don't like.

Jeff: I mean Java.

Leo: Java, well. That's personal. I just don't like it.

Jeff: Is it creepy, Leo?

Leo: I like interpretive languages because it's really easy
to iterate. You write, compile, run, very quickly. But
the disadvantage of a traditional interpretive language is that they're slow.
There's a lot of overhead, so Python, Ruby, Pearl, these are all interpretive
languages. Go is one as well. Sometimes they call them, kind of pejoratively,
scripting languages. But I feel like there's a certain advantage to having this
quick iteration cycle in a very clean, simple syntax. The other thing about Go
is it was written specifically to support concurrency and so forth. So it has
nice features for that. That probably won't benefit you in Android programming
but I just feel like I could much more easily write the program I want in Go.
But I have to investigate. I'm still investigating, what does that mean when
they say, “Android support.”

Gina: I'm reading about it, this is interesting. Very interesting.

Leo: Because when you write your to-do text, it's written
in Java.

Gina: Yes, yes. I love Java and Java was the first
object-oriented language that I kind of cut my teeth on. So I do like it. But I
do agree that a language like Go – I haven't played with Go a lot but it sounds
similar to Ruby or PHP or a scripting language. It's easier to start with, for
sure. Lighter.

Leo: For something like I want to write, very simple, I
wouldn't want to write even to-do text in Go. But for what I want to write,
which is a very simple app, it might be more than enough and I would sure
prefer that. Go is fun. I know the hour of code is over now, it was a minute of code.

Gina: My hour of code is never over.

Leo: Can we make this a year of code? What about it, huh?
How about a decade of code? Let's go for it, man. So partial -

Jeff: You don't believe CNN, will
you believe the New York Times?

Leo: Yes, they say it too? I do believe them.

Jeff: “American intelligence officials have concluded that
the North Korean government was centrally involved in the recent attacks,” dah
dah dah. “Senior administration officials, who will not speak on the record
about the intelligence findings, said the White House was still debated whether
to publicly accuse North Korea on what amounts to a cyber terrorism campaign.”
It's said it was not clear how the White House would respond to North Korea, so
this is all traveling kind of stuff.

Leo: This is all traveling to see what the reaction is,
particularly from North Korea, at this point.

Jeff: “Some went to the Obama administration to argue that
the government of Mr. Kim must be directly confronted, but that raises the
question of what consequences the administration would threaten.” “We're going
to force you to watch The Interview,” but is that torture? “Or how much of its
evidence would it make public without revealing details of how the United
States was able to penetrate North Korean computer networks to trace the source
of the hacking. Others argue that direct confrontation with the North over the
threats to Sony and moviegoers might result in escalation.” What are they going
to do, get rid of Into the Woods next? “Give North Korea the confrontation it
often covets, feed the troll.”

Leo: This is more effective than their nuclear weapons
program and I think if, you know, the success they've achieved – if this is
North Korea, the success they've achieved is absolutely going to -

Jeff: Oh, you know who's watching? Putin's watching this,
saying, “This is going to get me out of this currency mess.”

Jeff: Japan, for which Sony is an iconic corporate name, has
argued that a public accusation could interfere with the delicate diplomatic
negotiations underway for the return of Japanese nationals 1:53:08.5?? years ago.

Leo: Very true.

Jeff: Well, well, well, well.

Leo: So, yes, this was leaked by the administration to the
Times and CNN.

Jeff: NBC as well.

Leo: Well, I think it must be true, then.

Jeff: I wouldn't – you know, don't forget the New York Times
said there was weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So
let's hold off a little bit.

Leo: Really, all their saying is, the senior administration
officials say, off the record, say … Although, why would they say that if they
didn't think it was true? Because it is inflammatory to say
that. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Anyway, that is the end of this show. What a
good show.

Gina: Good show, good year.

Leo: I love this. What a good year this has been. Next
week, if you tune in next time, you will see the best of TWiG. Some of our best
moments from 2014, rants, raves, Leistungsschutzrecht.

Gina:Leistungsschutzrecht.

Jeff: Was that this year or last year?

Leo: Oh God, it all blends together. I believe it was this
year, wasn't it?

Gina: Chipotle, so 2012.

Leo: We're not talking about Glee this year.

Gina: Glee is so 2012. We've been doing this show for five
years now.

Leo: Yow!

Jeff: My new favorite is Master Chef Junior. Did you watch
the finale last night?

Leo: I just saw the promos for it and I thought I don't
really want to watch Gordon Ramsay scream at children.

Jeff: He didn't, though. These kids were amazing.

Leo: They look like they really are good cooks.

Jeff: You know what made me so happy about it? Let's be
honest. Every one of these kids is probably treated like a food geek at school
and they're going to go back heroes.

Leo: Food, by the way, is the new tech. I have decided it
is the new information technology. It is the new thing and I am announcing now,
today on this show for the first time ever, TWiT is abandoning technology.
We're going to cover food nonstop from now on.

Jeff: This Week in Asparagus. Breaking news! Asparagus.

Gina: I'll do a livestream from my mom's Christmas Eve
dinner.

Leo: Don't you think we'd really just be happier in general
if we forgot about all this tech stuff and just talked about food?

Gina: This isn't a good way to end this year on this show,
Leo. Come on.

Leo: We're renaming the show This Week in Grub.

Jeff: The last TWiG ever.

Leo: No, no, no.

Gina: We live in an amazing time.

Leo: We do and we're watching it. Ringside
seats on the revolution. Two weeks from now will be New Years Eve and we
are starting at three in the morning, New Year's Eve, Pacific Time. We'll go
till three in the morning New Year's Day, Pacific Time as we greet every time
zone across the world and wish them happy new year. I
think we have calls from almost every time zone. Do you mind if I do a short
list of time zones we're still looking for and you can go to TwiT.tv/nye and
sign up. We need Norfric Island. We need the Northern
Marianas Islands including Guam, Micronesia and Vladivostok. If
you're in Vladivostok. Burma, Kokos, Afghanistan, Iran – that ain't
going to happen. Azors, Cape Verde, Trinidad, South Georgia
or Sandwich Islands.Most importantly, our last time
zone of the 24-hour period, 3 a.m.New Year's Day,
Jarvis Island.A bird sanctuary in the Pacific.

Jeff: Fly me there and I'll do it.

Gina: I was going to say, Jeff will do it. It's get Jeff's name written all over it, literally.

Leo: Literally. Apparently, it's a bird sanctuary.

Jeff: Yes, and the problem is, it's
not actually named after a guy named Jarvis. It's a typo.

Leo: It's a typo?

Jeff: Yes, it's some other name. It's not Jarvis.

Leo: You're kidding me. Here is is. No trespassing, US Fish
and Wildlife Service, Jarvis Island. You're sure, Jeff, we can't get you to go
there?

Jeff: I'm thinking so.

Leo: It has a flag of it's very
own. It's an unincorporated, unorganized territory managed by the US Fish and
Wildlife Service. So it belongs to all of us. It belongs to America. It isn't
very big but it has to have its New Year's Day just like every other island. So
we need somebody from Jarvis and then we can go home after that one. That'll be
the last one. So if you're in those time zones, TwiT.tv/nye. We are doing this
all for UNICEF, we hope to raise lots of money for
UNICEF. We've got auctions, and prizes and all sorts of stuff. We're going to
do it just like the Jerry Lewis telethons of my youth. I'm going to wear a
tuxedo. We'll have a tote board, we'll have a drum
roll.

Jeff: What platform are you using for the contributions?

Leo: United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, has a platform
for us. In fact, right after this, I'm making a video for them. It's UNICEF USA
but the money will go to children all over the world. We were looking for an
international charity that was highly rated. Charity Navigator gave them four
out of four stars. 91% of every dollar spent goes right to children. You know,
everybody's familiar with this, at least in the US because we all went around
with those orange boxes on Halloween trick or treating for UNICEF. They're
doing a lot to help children in Africa from ebola. So I thought this would be a
good one for us.

Jeff:Indiegogo just made its
personal campaign platform free.

Leo: Neat.

Jeff: So for future times when you want to raise something
for charity or want to raise it for yourself, actually, say, “I want to send my
kid to college.” That's now an option.

Leo: Isn't that great. That's appropriate. Anyway, do join
us any time in the New Year's Eve time frame. 3 a.m. New
Year's Eve, 3 a.m.New Year's Day. I'm going to
be up all night and we have so much stuff planned. It is just going to – we had
so much fun last year we said, let's go all in this
year. It's costing us a pretty penny. We've taken over the street out front.
We've got permits from the city of Petaluma. Please don't rain.

Jason: What happens out there if it does rain?

Leo: It'll be wet.

Jason: It'll just be a wet bouncy castle.

Leo: It'll be a lot easier to fall off the mechanical bull.

Jason: It'll keep the line moving.

Leo: It's going to be weird.

Jeff: Uh-oh, I've got to give you one more.

Leo: More tweets?

Jeff: Donald Trump.

Leo: Oh lord.

Gina: Oh boy.

Jeff: Just go to twitter.com/realdonaldtrump.

Leo: Oh, what does he say?

Jeff: I haven't even watched it yet. I just, how can you
avoid?

Leo: There are a lot of tweets on this, aren't there?

Jeff: Oh yeah, it's going crazy.

Leo: Donald Trump, “A sad day for freedom of speech.” No,
I've got it right here. Let's play the video. Wait a minute, I guess I don't have the video. You've got the video. Play the video. Trump
vlog, “The Interview movie, a sad day for freedom of
speech. I posted something on Instagram.”

(video plays)

Kim Jong-Un, you're fired! I like it, how he has to
preface it, “Although I hear it was a terrible movie...” That was gratuitous. Grr.

Gina:Grr.

Leo: Kim, you want to mess with this man? I don't think so.
Look at that hair.

Jeff: Who has weirder hair, Donald Trump or Kim Jong-Un?

Leo: There you go. Feels like they should
know each other. Happy Christmas, happy New Year, happy Hanukkah. Jeff,
Gina, love doing this show with you. Take the week off next week, enjoy
yourselves.

Jeff: Merry whatever.

Leo: It's not Ed's first Christmas, it's second Christmas.

Gina: Her second Christmas.

Leo: She's going to start knowing what's going on now.

Gina: Wait, what am I talking about? It's her third
Christmas. Yes, she was born in September so she was only a tiny little thing.

Leo: First Christmas, yes, she didn't remember that. But
she'll remember this one.

Gina: It's pretty great. We get to watch Rudolph. She's
starting to understand a little bit more now. So that's good.

Leo: Do you do that new thing, the elf on the shelf?

Gina: We love the elf on the shelf. Grandma has one of
those, yes.

Leo: We didn't have that when I was a kid. Right, Jeff?
That's new.

Jeff: What on the shelf?

Jason: That's all you need to know.

Leo: This is something new. I don't know if you can have a
new Christmas tradition but apparently you can.

Jason: You do the elf on the shelf for a couple of days and
it quickly becomes a tradition. It's kind of cool.

Jeff: Oh, now I understand. Sorry, sorry.

Leo: You've seen this everywhere, right?

Jeff: Well, now it makes sense. On
Sharktank, for their holiday. The first businessman was a guy who did
“Mensch on the bench.”

Leo: Now you get it.

Jeff: Now I get it.

Leo: It's kind of a Hallmark tradition because there's this
elfontheshelf.com and they have kids -

Jason: I mean, they have tons of
merchandise.

Leo: It's been heavily merched, though I don't know if they
own it. But you hide the elf every day in December?

Jason: No, we don't hide the elf.

Leo: Sorry. What am I saying? The elf hides himself!

Jason: At night, the elf flies back to the North Pole to tell
Santa how the kids have been and then positions themselves in the house in a different place the next morning.

Jeff: Wait a second, Jason. So now your kid is surveilled?
Is it the NSA of Christmas?

Jason: Yes, pretty much. That's exactly what it is. But see,
this is the thing. They opt in, because they are genuinely curious. So they opt
into their location tracking, it's okay.

Leo: The Washington Post has an article that says, “The elf
on the shelf is preparing your child to live in a future police state, professor
warns.”

Jeff: I was joking!

Leo: They've already taken your quote and made it a story
already.

Jason: Wow.

Leo: So here's the thing with elf on the shelf. It's a
registered trademark. To me, a Christmas tradition should not be registered a
trademark. Santa Claus is not a registered trademark.

Gina: Capitalism, man.

Leo: Somebody owns the elf on a shelf.

Jeff: I just searched, “elf on the shelf creepy,” tons of
links. Tons. “Elf on the shelf is terrorizing our
kids.” (crosstalk)

Leo: Really? I thought kids like it. Don't kids like it?

Jason: Yes, because they name it. They give it a name and
feed it.

Leo: Where did you get your elf on the shelf? Did you hand
make one from sticks and old rags just like Grandma did?

Jason: No, you know, we bought one. We got it at the store,
but here's the story behind it. Santa creates all these elves and puts them in
a box at the store so when kids see them in the store, they aren't magical until they name them. So you bring it home, you give it a
name and that's when they start moving around at night when they don't watch.

Jeff: A few dirty words here, but I recommend
elfontheshelfwillkillus.us.

Leo: It's a little bit Chucky.

Jeff: “Elf on the shelf is creepy,” says the headline.

Leo: Apparently, Rudolph was created by a department store.
Santa Claus, as we know him, comes from a Pepsi commercial. This is a long
tradition of Christmas commercialism. God Bless it.

Jason: Merry Christmas.

Leo: Merry Christmas, everybody. That's it for This Week in
Google. We'll see you in two weeks in 2015! Bye bye.